First, the response from petitions.whitehouse.gov says that construction of a Death Star is estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000, a number cited from a student-run economics blog at Lehigh University.

“We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it,” says Paul Shawcross, the letter’s author and chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Second, the letter states that the Administration does not support blowing up planets. Rather, the country prefers to explore them.

“We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe,” Shawcross says in the letter.

For his third point, Shawcross flexes his “Star Wars” knowledge.

“Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?” he asks.

The letter also states that the U.S. already has something large floating in the sky – the International Space Station – and that is enough.